36TH TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

TIFF Enhances Lineup and Bolsters Overseas Guests

Dai 365 Kai Tokyo Kokusai Eigasai
第36回東京国際映画祭
Japanese (and other languages) with English (and Japanese) subtitles
Venue: Hibiya-Yurakucho-Ginza area | October 23 (Mon) - November 1 (Wed), 2023 Details: https://2023.tiff-jp.net/en/schedule/
Official website: 2023.tiff-jp.net/en/
Theater website: 2023.tiff-jp.net/en/access/
Theater website: 2023.tiff-jp.net/en/schedule/list/
Tariff: Various; See the online ticket site.
Advance tickets: https://2023.tiff-jp.net/en/ticket/ If sold out online, the box office has day-of sales
Talk event: Many in person — check TIFF’s website for all the details.

Now that Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) is fully at home in the center of cinema-land, with venues throughout the Yurakucho-Hibiya-Marunouchi-Ginza area, it has turned its focus on shoring up the lineup, with nearly double the number of films over last year, as well as increasing the presence of international guests. In his third year at the creative helm, Programming Director Shozo Ichiyama is rolling out over 200 titles across nine main sections, with the highest profile being the retrospective tribute to Yasujiro Ozu on the 120^th anniversary of the auteur’s birth, featuring nearly 40 digitally restored masterworks being shown on screens at TIFF and the National Film Archive Japan.

As always, the complete lineup is subtitled in English, with only a handful of exceptions. There will be ample Q&A sessions with the filmmakers and stars (with English interpretation usually available), a range of talk events with invited guests and a symposium devoted to Ozu’s enduring influence that’s aptly titled Shoulders of Giants. On hand to discuss him will be Ozu aficionado Wim Wenders, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Jia Zhangke and Kelly Reichardt.

Here's a brief overview of the Japanese films in the festival — but we urge you to explore the full lineup, since there are many, many non-Japanese films not to be missed.

Opening film

PERFECT DAYS

Perfect Days, 124 min
Director: Wim Wenders
©2023 MASTER MIND LTD.

This year’s Opening and Closing films are once again hot tickets. Starting things off on an impressive foot, Wim Wenders brings his poetic, poignant Perfect Days to the festival, just a year after shooting it in and around the architectural masterpieces in Shibuya that are part of the Tokyo Toilet Project. Everyone’s favorite actor, Koji Yakusho, won the Cannes Best Actor Award this year for his role in the film as a contemplative janitor named Hirayama, an unusual man who spends his days cleaning toilets, taking photos of trees and reading… until a face from his past shows up. Japan took the unexpected step of making the film its official Oscar submission this year, and based on its rapturous reception at Cannes, Telluride and New York, its chances of shortlisting look very good.

Closing film

GODZILLA MINUS ONE

Godzilla Minus One, ゴジラ-1.0, 125 min
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
©2023 TOHO CO., LTD.

Godzilla turns 70 this year, and SFX wizard Takashi Yamazaki is bringing the king of monsters to life on screen in a more explosively realistic way for the anniversary. TIFF’s Closing Film, Godzilla Minus One, resets the legend to its roots in the immediate aftermath of WWII, just after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, restoring Godzilla to its rightful place as a chilling metaphor for nuclear devastation. With Japan already plunged into chaos, the bombs awaken the kaiju, who arises from the sea and once again begins carving his inexorable path of destruction.

Competition

Wim Wenders is also serving as the President of the International Competition Jury at the 36th TIFF, which also includes Spanish filmmaker Albert Serra, Chinese actress and producer Zhao Tao, Vietnamese producer Tran Thi Bich Ngoc, and Japanese producer Mizue Kunizane. They will be making their awards selections from among 15 films, 10 of them world premieres, selected from among 1,942 titles from 114 countries and regions.

(Ab)normal Desire

(Ab)normal Desire, 正欲, 134 min
Director: Yoshiyuki Kishi
©2021 Asai Ryo/Shinchosha @2023 (Ab)normal Desire Committee

There are once again three Japanese films in the section this year: Yoshiyuki Kishi’s (Ab)normal Desire, Yohei Kotsuji’s A Foggy Paradise (a feature debut) and Tetsuya Tomina’s Who Were We? While the latter film features Ryohei Matsuda and Nana Komatsu in leading roles, the most commercial of the three titles is Kishi’s. It stars former SMAP member Goro Inagaki, who also appeared in a competition film at last year’s TIFF, By the Window, which went on to become the Audience Award winner.

In (Ab)normal Desire, based on the bestselling novel by Ryo Asai, Inagaki plays a father who’s worried his son might be shutting himself off from the rest of the world and Yui Aragaki plays a woman who has a water fetish. The two meet when she’s called in for questioning during a police investigation, and Inagaki is the public prosecutor.

A FOGGY PARADISE

A Foggy Paradise, 曖昧な楽園, 167 min
Director: Yohei Kotsuji
©AIMAINARAKUEN FILM COMMITTEE

WHO WERE WE?

Who Were We? わたくしどもは。 101 min
Director: Tetsuya Tomina
©TETEUYA to MINA film

Asian Future

In TIFF’s 10-film Asian Future section, there is remarkable work from up-and-coming directors in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India, Iran, Israel, Thailand, Turkey and Japan, all of whom are receiving their world premieres and will be eligible for awards. Happily, three of the films were directed by women. There are two Japanese films in the section, one a relationship ensemble dramedy, Take Me to Another Planet, by Satoshi Kimura, and the other Hiroshi Shoji’s long-awaited second feature, Tatsumi.

Shoji won the Japanese cinema section of the 2015 TIFF with the much-loved Ken and Kazu, which launched the careers of its two stars, Shinsuke Kato and Katsuya Maeguma. The director mines similar underdogs-in-the-underworld territory with Tatsumi, and once again extracts exceptional performances from a mostly unknown cast. The story focuses on the eponymous protagonist, who sets out to avenge the death of his ex-girlfriend, with the help of the dead woman’s voluble younger sister.

TATSUMI

Tatsumi, 辰巳, 108 min
Director: Hiroshi Shoji
©Shoji Hiroshi

Nippon Cinema Now

The Nippon Cinema Now section, which presents recent Japanese films that have been deemed worthy of international recognition, comprises 11 films this year. Among the highlights is Neo Sora’s documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus, featuring the final concert performance of the beloved Oscar-winning composer and musician. The reviews since its Venice premiere have been rapturous, and it has already become perhaps the most in-demand Japanese film of the year.

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO | OPUS

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus, 103 min
Director: Neo Sora
©KAB America Inc./KAB Inc.

Another hotly anticipated documentary is Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s The Making of a Japanese. The Japanese British creator of Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams, spent years following children at a Tokyo primary school, and is sure to provide illuminating insights into the process of education and acquisition of trademark traits.

THE MAKING OF A JAPANESE

The Making of a Japanese, 小学校～それは小さな社会～, 99 min
Director: Ema Ryan Yamazaki
©Cineric Creative/Pystymetsä/Point du Jour 2023

ICHIKO

Ichiko, 市子, 126 min
Director: Akihiro Toda
©2023 "ICHIKO" Film Partners

Also included in the section is the riveting Ichiko by theater director Akihiro Toda and based on his highly acclaimed stage play, which won Best Screenplay at Sun Mall Studio Awards in 2015. The film features popular actress Hana Sugisaki (Piéta in the Toilet, Her Love Boils Bathwater) in perhaps her most vivid performance ever as the eponymous character, a woman of mystery who disappears just after happily accepting her boyfriend’s proposal of marriage. As he searches for her, layers of societal ills are peeled back and surprising truths emerge.

The Nippon Cinema Now Director in Focus this year is the very prolific Hideo Jojo, who has directed over 100 films since his debut but is little known overseas since most of the titles are pinku (softcore porn). Jojo has moved toward more mainstream films in the past few years, starting with the high-school baseball hit On the Edge of Their Seats (2020). That film, along with three others, will be highlighted in the section: Love Nonetheless, Believers and Twilight Cinema Blues.

Jojo also appears in the TIFF Series section, where he directed the third episode of the upcoming WOWOW TV miniseries Commemorating the 120th anniversary of Ozu’s birth. The cabler hired six up-and-coming filmmakers to remake six of the legendary director’s early silent films (his “roots”) to create a contemporary omnibus. Jojo’s remake is Passing Fancy; the other two on show are I Was Born, But... by Yasuhiro Yoshida and Dragnet Girl by Yusaku Matsumoto.

Passing Fancy

Gala Selection

Among the Japanese films in the Gala Selection is the return of Takashi Miike, who’s been toiling with great success in series-land. His colorful Lumberjack the Monster isn’t exactly a throwback to his glory days of gore and mayhem, but it is gruesomely rewarding. It stars Kazuya Kamenashi as a lawyer with a perturbing brain chip, and Shota Sometani as a doctor. For Miike, violence is rather pristine, and the casually grisly discussions between the psychopaths at the center of the tale are really quite humorous.

LUMBERJACK THE MONSTER

Lumberjack the Monster, 怪物の木こり, 125 min
Director: Takashi Miike
Japanese Premiere
©2023 "Lumberjack the Monster" Film Partners

SHADOW OF FIRE

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Shinya Tsukamoto’s dark antiwar tale Shadow of Fire, winner of the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival. With this final title in his antiwar trilogy (following Fires on the Plain and Killing), Tsukamoto turns his lens on two traumatized survivors of the 1945 Tokyo firebombing, a widow and a young orphan — “the people dwelling in the shadows,” as he puts it. “As the world takes a step backward from peace," he explains, "I felt compelled to make this movie, as a prayer.” While the cinematic rage of the previous two films is less explosive and more hushed here, Shadow of Fire is as horrific as it is moving.

Animation

The 36th TIFF is highlighting a revitalized Animation section. Until last year’s edition, only Japanese films were showcased, but this year’s nine-film lineup includes the latest animated Japanese titles along with prominent works from overseas. Ahead of its November release in Japan, we recommend Komada: A Whisky Family by Masayuki Yoshihara (The Eccentric Family), which tells the story of Rui, the young female president of the family business, a craft whisky distillery, as she attempts to revive the one-time signature whisky that put the distillery on the map.

KOMADA - A WHISKY FAMILY

TIFF theaters in Hibiya, Yurakucho, Ginza

Tokyo Filmgoer makes every effort to provide the correct theater showtimes, but schedules are subject to change.
Please be sure to check with the theater before going.